


Unease You

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Female Friendship, First Impressions, First Meetings, Gen, Police, Stakeout, Surveillance, Undercover As Prostitute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:04:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detective Brienne Tarth is on a stakeout, wearing a skirt, when she makes a new acquaintance. Margaery Tyrell is to blame. </p><p>Prequel to Someone to Watch Over Me</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unease You

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of Cop!Brienne sorta-fluff, which doesn’t require you to have read “Someone to Watch Over Me,” though if you haven’t read it I hope you’ll want to after you read this. 
> 
> Title is from the song “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes, which can kinda apply to Margaery, Brienne _and_ Jaime, each in their own way. As usual, I know nothing about actual police procedure or surveillance technology. I owns nossink and I beliefe in nossink, Lebowski!

Brienne is wearing a skirt, which is never likely to put her in a good mood. To make matters worse, the skirt is so tight and short it just about covers the upper third of her thighs, provided she doesn’t move much. When she does, it covers considerably less. And it’s all Margaery Tyrell’s fault. 

Margaery isn’t even on Brienne’s squad, she’s with Vice. But in this joint surveillance operation, she’s the one who knows the most about working undercover as a streetwalker. So she got to choose another woman officer to pair up with, though Brienne cannot fathom why she didn’t choose someone prettier and more convincing in the role. To top it all off, after the first night she apparently also gets to choose what Brienne wears. 

Brienne has very little experience working undercover, and a lot more sitting in vans with dark-tinted windows, watching and listening and waiting for the person under surveillance to do something sufficiently incriminating to warrant an arrest. It’s tedious work, but Brienne would take it gladly over wearing high heels and smiling for curb crawlers. 

Not that there are any high heels involved. Margaery gave Brienne the once-over when they met, and did not attempt to force a pair of stilettos on the tall detective. But at the end of their first night walking the curb in front of Petyr Baelish’s nightclub, while they were changing back into their own clothes in the locker room, Brienne turned from stuffing her hooker clothes into her locker to find Margaery staring at her with frank appraisal. 

It was more than a little unnerving. Brienne was used to disdainful looks from beautiful women like Margaery. Usually such looks were water off a duck’s back to her, or nearly so. But there was no disdain or easy superiority on Margaery’s face as she watched Brienne where she stood in her T-shirt and smallclothes. Nevertheless, Brienne blushed. Even her thighs turned pink. 

“You’ve got what my gran used to call childbearing hips,” Margaery said, as though she were discussing appetizing options on a restaurant menu. 

“Uh.”

“It’s good. They’re wide and,” she sketched an S shape in the air, “curvy. Your ass, too. And your legs are quite something.” 

It should have sounded like a backhanded compliment ( _or a forehanded insult_ ) yet somehow… didn’t. Brienne tried desperately to cover her thighs with her hands, which only made her feel more exposed. 

Margaery finished her scrutiny of Brienne’s physique with a satisfied nod, turned away. “We can work with that,” she said, thoroughly discomposing Brienne, who was adamant she would not dwell on the cryptic comment. 

She should have asked Margaery what she meant, and nipped it in the bud at once. When she shows up for her shift the following evening, Margaery is waiting for her with a piece of slinky, midnight-blue fabric which proves to be a skirt, though at first glance it looks more like a largish headband. Margaery even brought matching tights. 

Brienne shakes her head so hard she feels dizzy. “No. I’m sorry, Margaery. I will pay you back, if you like, but I will not wear that. No.”

“Brienne, what is it that you think men are looking for when they hire a woman off the street?” Margaery asks with the expression of a woman ready for resistance and determined not to allow Brienne’s reluctance to win out.

It’s a trick question, Brienne just knows it, but she can’t think of any answer except the most straightforward one. “They are looking to break the law by obtaining sex for money,” she mutters, expecting a setup. 

Margaery smiles sweetly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not surprised _you_ would put it like that. Take it from someone who’s been doing this for over three years now: they are not looking for a woman with whom to have sex. They are looking for a woman _who will go away_ right after they are done having sex with her. No conversation, no shared cigarettes, no ‘will I see you again?’ They’re done, and then she’s gone. _That_ is the appeal of prostitution for the customer. Well, that and the power than comes from controlling the purse strings in that brief relationship, but you get what I mean.”

This actually makes perfect sense to Brienne, who somewhat grudgingly has to admit Margaery ( _Detective Tyrell_ ) is smart and has good cop instincts as well as being pretty. Brienne is not very proud of the meanness behind that thought. 

She stares at her feet as she grits out her answer. “I don’t see what that has to do with my wearing that…” She waves at the blue garment in Margaery’s hand. “That _thing_.”

“I’m getting to that. If a man wants the woman he’s hired to vanish just as soon as she can get up and get her stuff, he doesn’t want a woman wearing trousers. I mean that literally as well as metaphorically. Brienne, you may not realize this, but you nearly blew our cover last night when nobody tried to pick you up in over three hours.” Margaery holds up a hand as Brienne opens her mouth. “And before you tell me you think you don’t have the looks for this kind of undercover work, that has nothing to do with anything. It was because you wore jeans, Brienne. I didn’t want to say anything last night because you were so obviously uncomfortable with this whole assignment, but no man looking for a twenty-stag fuck in the back seat or an alley is going to want to wait for a trick to get out of and back into trousers. _This_ ,” she holds up the skirt, shakes it in front of Brienne like a bullfighter’s cape, “gives ease of access and is much more realistic. Plus I think it’ll look good on you, and the men do like to think we make ourselves look extra cheap and pretty for them.” 

Brienne looks up and sees Margaery smile at her. It’s as genuine a smile as Brienne has ever received from anyone, even if Margaery’s words are laced with double meanings and entendres about life and men and other things Brienne feels underqualified to discuss. Brienne looks back at her feet, feeling ashamed of her initial assessment of Margaery, even more ashamed that she let her personal feelings get in the way of doing her job to the best of her abilities. 

“I thought the jeans would be all right because they’re so tight,” she mumbles, half an explanation and half an apology.

“For an undercover gig in a nightclub, they’d be perfect. But for freezing our buns off in front of Baelish’s club, you can’t do better than a skirt you’d be ashamed to wear to dinner with your parents.” 

Brienne has to laugh at that, a little. She holds out her hand for the skirt and tights, which miraculously fit her. She suspects Margaery found them in a store for transvestites, if there is such a place, though she doesn’t dare ask. Once she’s changed and received Margaery’s stamp of approval, she puts her foot down about makeup. Margaery backs off, but gives Brienne a look which says loud and clear she will push lipstick and eyeliner if they are still doing this tomorrow night. 

After just over an hour, Brienne sends her second wannabe john of the evening packing with a discreet peek at her badge. Her buns are well and truly freezing, and the skirt is clearly doing the trick, which Brienne is certain she should not find reassuring, except insofar as she is better able to do justice to this undercover gig. 

She returns to her patch of the curb, from which she has a good view of the side entrance to Baelish’s nightclub. Margaery is covering the front. Through her earpiece, Brienne can hear Margaery letting her fifth john of the evening off with a warning. Brienne cannot see the black surveillance van from where she’s standing, which is just as well. She does not much enjoy the thought of Pod, the kid she’s shepherded since he first became a detective, Hyle Hunt, he of the disastrous one night stand, and Dontos Hollard, a barely functioning alcoholic two steps away from early retirement, watching her while she keeps stubbornly tugging on the hem of her sliver of a skirt to make it cover just one inch of thigh more than the manufacturer intended. 

“Hey Brienne.” Margaery’s voice is reedy and metallic in Brienne’s ear. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m cold, I’m thirsty, and I’ve just remembered something important: gods, I hate stakeouts.” 

Margaery’s chuckle turns into very sharp static. “I know, right? Just when you think something is finally about to happen, it goes right on not happening.”

Brienne doesn’t answer because there is a car pulling up to the side entrance of the club. A sleek coupé in a shade of red which practically screams ‘Look at me in all my tastelessness!’

“Margaery, I think something is happening.”

“What?” Not Margaery’s voice: Hunt chiming in from the van. “Is it Baelish?”

Brienne waits a long beat for the man who steps out of the car to be illuminated by the light which spills through the door of the club before she answers. “Hunt, you need to call the Old Bear. Jaime Lannister just got let into the club by one of Baelish’s goons.”

Hunt doesn’t answer but Brienne can imagine him stabbing the keys on his cell phone frantically. Although the stakeout on Baelish’s club has to do primarily with suspicion of the club being used as the hub of a human-trafficking operation, everyone at the precinct knows the real prize would be a solid connection between Baelish and the Lannister family, which is being investigated for money laundering, fraud, embezzlement, not to mention the murky circumstances of old man Lannister’s passing. Cersei Lannister in particular has been a person of interest for months, but her twin brother and fellow CEO is nothing to sneeze at, especially now that Brienne’s positive visual ID has established a non-circumstantial, if tenuous link between the Lannisters and Baelish. 

_I guess Jaime Lannister isn’t smart enough to go through the front door like any other club patron_ , Brienne thinks a touch smugly while she rubs her hands and blows on them to keep her circulation going, and waits for the Old Bear to relay his instructions via Hunt. 

“You cannot be serious,” is her response to what Hunt eventually tells her. If she didn’t know he fears Captain Mormont’s wrath like he fears the Stranger, she’d be inclined to suspect Hunt is pulling another one of his moronic pranks. “Arrest him for what, sneaking into a nightclub without paying the cover charge?”

“No, for parking in a loading zone in direct violation of the city’s Code of Public Safety.” Hunt sounds insufferably self-satisfied, although Brienne would bet even money it’s actually Mormont’s idea. “Pod and Dontos are coming to back you up. Margaery and I will take the main entrance.” 

Brienne’s eyes are trained on the side door of the club, which is opening, Jaime Lannister stepping out, exchanging heated words with Petyr Baelish, waving his right arm in the shorter man’s face. “There’s no time,” she says. “He’s coming out. Baelish is with him. No, wait, Baelish is going back inside.”

“Brienne, wait for backup,” Hunt raises his voice, for which alone Brienne would like to slap him, but she cannot afford to be annoyed with Hunt just now.

She is already crossing the street as Jaime Lannister unlocks his car door. The first squad cars approach with proper backup, and Dontos Hollard pipes up some yards away, clearly inebriated and letting undercover work go to his head. “The law, the law!” Brienne hears him squeak. “Get down, Pod!”

“We _are_ the law!” The ‘you bloody clown’ is unspoken yet clear from Pod’s exasperated tone. “Gods help us!”

Brienne spares a moment to sigh before she is close enough to smell Jaime Lannister’s aggressive aftershave. She says his name to get him to turn around before he gets in his car, just in case there is a weapon concealed inside. Brienne feels the absence of her service gun like a missing limb. 

He turns, a distinct nervous twitch running down his right arm, takes in the sight of her, frowns. What he says is not exactly what Brienne expects to hear from a suspect whom she is about to arrest. 

“Fuck me,” Jaime Lannister drawls in a voice dripping with privilege and venom. “If Baelish thinks he can talk me around by hiring a bloody giantess to service me, he’s got another thing coming.”

Brienne remembers to take a deep breath before she reaches under the waistband of her ( _short, tight_ ) skirt and produces her badge, is rewarded by the equal parts annoyed and amused ogle on Lannister’s face turning into wariness as his eyes follow the movement of her hand. 

“Detective Brienne Tarth, Major Crimes Division. I am placing you under arrest for…” Oh, to the seven hells with parking violations! “For embezzlement, fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit murder.” 

“I deny that last one,” he says smoothly, as though this were all just a charming parlor game, though his grin is feral in its intensity. “And I assure you my father must be pissing himself down in whatever hell he’s in to see me being arrested by a great beast of a woman in a tiny excuse for a skirt.” He rakes his eyes up and down Brienne in appraisal which rivals Margaery’s in frankness, though his has an edge to it which makes Brienne want to squirm. She doesn’t budge, returns Jaime Lannister’s challenging look stonily. 

Pod jogs up just then with a pair of handcuffs at the ready, which does wonders for Brienne’s equilibrium. “Turn around and place your hands on the hood of your car,” she says. 

Jaime Lannister looks up from her legs to her eyes, crosses his arms in defiance, smirks. “And what if I don’t?”

After knowing Margaery for barely two days Brienne is absolutely certain of how the other woman would respond. Margaery would smile, and look up into Lannister’s handsome face, and say something equal parts flirtation and assertion of her authority. And he’d turn around and obey her. 

Brienne is not that woman. Snatching the cuffs out of Pod’s outstretched hand, she grabs Lannister by the arm, spins him around, and pushes him bodily against the hood of his car, barely noticing how high her skirt is riding up as she leans down to keep Lannister still and cuff him. Only then does she realize that one of his hands is not flesh and blood, but cool, smooth plastic: a prosthetic. 

“Easy there, Blue Eyes, we don’t have a safe word yet,” Jaime Lannister snarls over his shoulder as she yanks him back up, but suspects’ imprecations are wind once they are secured. Brienne ignores him until a squad car pulls up and she has to place her hand on Lannister’s head when she puts him in the back seat, in accordance with protocol.

Watching the car pull away from the curb as uniformed police swarm around her and Baelish is brought out by Margaery and Hunt, in handcuffs, Brienne tries to resist the irrational urge to wipe the sense memory of silky-soft hair from her palm. Gives in and rubs her hand surreptitiously on the slithery material of her skirt. And tugs the skirt down her thighs for good measure. 

Despite being one of the arresting officers, Brienne really has nothing to do with the Lannister-Baelish case, and only hears about it from precinct gossip over the weeks which follow. When she runs into Margaery in the cafeteria, they sit together and talk about work and movies and Margaery being kicked out of her rent-controlled apartment because her building is finally being torn down after decades of warnings of imminent demolishment. Brienne wonders during those lunchtime conversations if people underestimate Margaery for being pretty as often as Brienne gets underestimated for being ugly. They do not spend time together outside of work, and that’s fine by Brienne, who has never had even a sort-of female friend before. 

When Pod gets a new partner newly transferred from Vice, a seedy-looking man called Bronn, Margaery assures Brienne that her former partner is in good hands. “Bronn _is_ very seedy, and I wouldn’t trust him with my virtue or my wallet, but he’s good police,” are Margaery’s exact words, and Brienne has let go of her initial impression of Margaery as just a pretty girl sufficiently to trust her judgment. 

She starts working a difficult case involving child rape, and has narrowed down her list of suspects to one Ramsay Snow when Captain Mormont calls her into his office, and informs her that due to budget cuts and shift schedules getting messed up he has to put her on Jaime Lannister’s protective detail for the next two nights. 

Brienne remembers a red car, a bored, supercilious voice, green eyes and soft hair ( _a nervous twitch at a strange voice hailing him from the dark, a savage look at the mention of his father’s death_ ). Also an uncharacteristic desire to smack a suspect once he is already subdued and handcuffed, if only it would get him to shut up. 

She grasps after reason, in an effort to wriggle out of the assignment. “Sir, Ramsay Snow…” 

“Has no idea we’re onto him,” Mormont cuts her off. “Don’t worry, Tarth, Snow’s still your collar. But Lannister has turned Crown Witness, and I need reliable officers on his protective detail. I’d go home and get some sleep if I were you. It’s just for two nights.”

And that, as they say, is that. At least she’s not required to wear a skirt while on protective detail. Small mercies. 

Brienne leaves the precinct trying to keep calm, yet itching to rush out and arrest Ramsay Snow, and let Jaime Lannister go hang. But she doesn’t, because Mormont gave her a direct order and it is her duty to protect Lannister, as much as she suspects the two nights she will spend in his company will make all the stakeouts, undercover operations and uncooperative witnesses of her entire career seem like a breeze by comparison.

**Author's Note:**

> Bits of dialogue in this fic are lifted (with slight tweaks) from the following shows: “Wire in the Blood,” “Life on Mars” (UK), “The Killing” (US), and “The Wire.” Ro Nordmann made a lovely [banner](http://s1179.photobucket.com/user/rosalinabambina/media/7c4a4605988d7287d86e5fc77c97a55c_zpsb759123e.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0) for this fic. The conclusion to this AU’s meeting between Jaime and Brienne can be read [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/979319/chapters/1927701).


End file.
